Our cross-country race of early-'80s bowwows isn't as much fun as the Donner party, but then again, those guys didn't have inflatable love dolls, either.

By now you are all aware that a "beater" is a car in which the fuel in its tank is more valuable than the sum of all its parts. As you may recall from two previous investigative reports—"Battle of the Beaters," October 1997, and "Battle of the Winter Beaters," May 2003—this magazine has spent untold thousands on your behalf testing the handling mettle and ditch worthiness of cars that some dweebs dare deem worthless.

We now turn our attention to diesels. When Europeans ask why Americans don't drive them, we point to the diesel cars of the early '80s. The high-water mark of diesel sales in the U.S. was 520,788, in 1981. A few years later the clatter car had all but disappeared, a victim of notorious unreliability and gasoline that cost 75 cents a gallon.

We wondered: How bad were these oil burners, and could we convince Mr. Csere to let us buy three to drive across the country? Would it be amusing to race three of them cross-country? It would.

This time our budget was $1500 per car (vs. $1000) because diesels, even old ones, have become a somewhat hot commodity as gas prices surged past $3 a gallon last fall. The extra dough increased the odds that the rides we purchased would be capable of making it out of our parking lot and on across the United States, from Ann Arbor to Redondo Beach, California, 2400 miles and change.

We rounded up a 1983 Datsun Maxima diesel, a 1982 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham diesel coupe, and a 1980 Mercedes-Benz 300SD. We were shocked when they all made it through our normal battery of tests. Tech major-domo Larry Webster's Mercedes did start leaking black gold at a rate that would have had Jed Clampett dancing a jig, but it survived.

We had another problem. Our art department was concerned that a straightforward run to California would not provide any rewarding photo ops. So the trail boss, associate editor Tony Quiroga, added a scavenger hunt to the contest, which, of course, one of the teams ignored. The items on the scavenger list (budget, $333) ranged from "team photo in truck-stop shower" (200 points) to "blowup doll" (100 points), and—for those willing to take a detour—the course guide from the Nashville Auto-Diesel College was worth an enticing 1000 points. To ensure that each team would scavenge, we made overall victory worth 10,000 points, a small amount over a second- or third-place finish—9012 points vs. 9011.99.

Here was the scene at the start of the race on Saturday morning, December 17: Up on a ladder, photographer Aaron Kiley is finishing work on a group shot. Quiroga and his crew innocently meander over, pile into the running Olds, and bolt. Minutes slip away before Webster discovers what has happened, and he and his crew hurriedly take off. Getting the latest start is technoid Aaron Robinson in the Maxima. While his colleagues are leaving him behind, he's off picking up a prescription for a yeast infection.

We felt a bit like so many excited but wary explorers and pioneers before us—not sure we could make it to the distant ocean or if we'd be able to forage enough points from the land. Either way, we were on a mission to reeducate the nation on the merits of Rudolf Diesel's invention. Sort of.